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Mentor

Obama: Emil Jones Jr.
You don’t jump from state senator to U.S. senator as quickly as Obama did without some support. Emil Jones Jr., the president of the
Illinois State Senate and an old gear in Chicago’s political machine, made Obama’s ascension his personal cause, shepherding him through the
valley of political peril. The two first met while Obama was a
community organizer in Chicago — in fact, Obama was protesting
outside of Jones’s office, trying to secure funds for his group. Jones
took Obama under his wing when he entered the State Senate in 1997,
reining in jealous rivals and sending Obama important bills to raise
his profile and build his credentials in anticipation of a national
Senate run. Obama refers to Jones as his “political godfather,” and
indeed, when Obama asked how Jones secured the endorsements of a
couple fellow state senators for him, Jones replied, in
godfather-esque fashion, “I made them an offer. And you don't want to
know.”

Romney: The Head Bainiac
Even before graduating from Harvard Business School, Romney was being courted by the prestigious Boston Consulting Group, where he would ultimately work for a while before decamping to relative newcomer and
hot shot Bain & Company, the brainchild of Bill Bain. At the company, Romney quickly rose through the ranks, getting the green light to
start a sister venture-capital fund, Bain Capital, which would earn
him a fortune. While perhaps not a mentor in the official tutelage
sense of the word — though Romney's unofficial biographer Hugh
Hewitt did use the label on Bain — Romney took to heart several
of his former boss's truisms. "Bill Bain had often said there is a
scientific basis for trusting your gut instincts. He reasoned that
there are all kinds of signals, body language signals that your
subconscious brain detects without you even being aware of it," Romney wrote in Turnaround. "Whether or not that is so, I've tended to listen to what I feel in my heart about people." Also in the book: "Bill Bain, my old boss, used to joke that most things can be fixed, but smart — or dumb — that's forever."